Learning To Think in Spanish
If you really want to be able to use a foreign language well, you need at some point to start thinking in the language — easier said than done! One of the participants in our Spanish forum asked how:
This is a stupid question, but how do you learn a new language's structure without thinking of your own language's structure? I get told that I should forget English while learning Spanish, but it's impossible for me. I find myself reading easy Spanish sentences and thinking of the English way instead of focusing on the Spanish. When I have to form Spanish sentences I always think of the English way. It's a hard habit to break out of and maybe someone could give me advice on breaking the habit.
It's a good question, not a stupid one, but answering it is kind of like explaining how to ride a bicycle: It's easy once you learn how. Another forum participant, a resident of Colombia, offered a personal example of learning a language:
Well, that question may have not a unique answer but I can tell you one conclusion from my own process of language learning. You must use (better, enjoy) a language rather than learn it.
I do not know when, in the past, I stopped to read English by translating it into Spanish; but I know it was a good advance. When I think in English now, I am sure I still have grammar mistakes but many other aspects are correct and they have sense to me because I get used to think with them. It is nice when you remember something in the original language you read it or heard it. It means you did not limit yourself to understand it, but you also appreciated the way it was said.
But if you are a beginner, what to do? Maybe from time to time you could try to think how would you have said something in Spanish (not only in Spanish class, but in your everyday speech and thoughts), let you be surprised by how different the constructions can be.
That's good advice. Throughout the day when you speak, ask yourself, "How would I say that in Spanish?" If you don't know, find out! Are there things you say every day? Learn how to say them in Spanish, and then do so — silently to yourself, if you must — and in time the language becomes a natural part of your life. You may drive your friends crazy if you do this too much, but in time you'll find the Spanish is becoming more than a classroom experience.
Comments
Frankly, thinking in another language = reprogramming the communication mechanisms or wiring in the brain. The brain develops pathways that become more deeply engrained through use.
To Illustrate: Think of a water hose left on in a sloping yard. At first, the water spreads out and just heads in a general direction (according to the laws of gravity). In 5 minutes, the water has begun to create or carve out a path, in a month, you’ll have a small stream. In a year a creek. In 50 years a river, in a few thousand (or million) years you have the Grand Canyon!!! Only by flow and constancy do you engrain a language on the human brain. YOU MUST HEAR AND USE A LANGUAGE TO THINK IN THAT LANGUAGE. The more you do, the quicker the re-wiring takes place. That’s the way the brain works. In all honesty, I don’t believe that there’s any real shortcut, but you can–through much hard work–speed up the process.
This is so true. The only problem is, that you are not always able to use or hear spanish.It helped me to start reading books. Simple romans, not trying to understand everything, but trying to understand the story.
Having spent the best part of two decades living in Spain now my brain tends to switch easily from one to the other. Learning Spanish wasn’t difficult because I was surrounded by it and immersed myself in it. Therefore I totally concur with Curtis in the first comment, to learn a language it must become ingrained.
Having Spanish as a 3rd language (French being first) and having taken courses in 2nd language acquisition, I have come to understand that it’s okay to use your first language as a basis for understanding how you use your mother tongue.
We usually don’t think at all about how language is constructed. We hardly think of adjective before verb as in “red bike”, but of course the inverse is used in French and Spanish.
On the other hand, coming from a francophone background, I had the privilege of analyzing sentence structure through years of grammar. This helped me immensely to understand Spanish.
Learning to think in Spanish takes time. For me, it’s not wrong to think about how you think in your first language (metacognition)… it just becomes easier as time goes by. It also helps to be living fully immersed in the language-learning environment.
Give it time, it will come.